Machine Dreams: More Human than Human?

"Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits! Waiting.”

-- Captain Jean-luc Picard, ‘The Measure of a Man’; Star Trek: The Next Generation

Leave it to good old Jean-luc Picard, the impossibly moral captain of the starship USS Enterprise-D to present a philosophical question so eloquently. Those lines, screen written in 1989 by Melinda Snodgrass have become all too prescient in an age when the U.S. is literally betting everything on winning what has become the artificial intelligence arms race with China. For not only are entire economies at risk along with national security, but we are also being compelled to deal with the not-so distant prospect of birthing a technological revolution with the most profound societal implications.

Imagine a world where humans co-existed with beings who, like us, had minds, thoughts, feelings, self-conscious awareness and the capacity to perform purposeful actions – but, unlike us, these beings had artificial mechanical bodies that could be switched on and off by us, at will.

That brave new world would throw up many issues as we came to terms with our robot counterparts as part and parcel of future ‘everyday’ life. How should we behave towards them? What moral duties would we have? What moral rights would such non-human persons have? Would it be morally permissible to try to thwart their emergence? Or would we have a duty to promote and foster their existence?

Take Picard’s observation about his ship’s android second officer: "A single Data... is a curiosity. A wonder, even. But thousands of Datas. Isn’t that becoming a race? And won’t we be judged by how we treat that race?"

Intriguing ethical questions such as these are often raised in science fiction, with media like the aforementioned Star Trek and Ridley Scott’s seminal real-life anime Bladerunner (itself based on Philip K. Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’) in which humanity’s upward crawl from the primordial slime lives explosively propels technology and the development of artificial intelligence that leads to the creation of nothing less than manufactured humans with plausible intelligence and looks, believable motion and shifts of expression.

As intellectual speculation, considering the ethics of the treatment of rational, sentient machines is interesting – thought experiments for rainy days. But two common arguments might suggest that the matter has no practical relevance, and any ethical questions need not be taken seriously.

The first is that such artificial people could not possibly exist. The second, often raised in the abortion debate, is that only people who have living and independently viable human bodies are due moral respect and are worthy of moral consideration. As we shall see, these arguments are debatable.

Mind, Matter and Emergence

We might suppose that mental phenomena – consciousness, thoughts, feelings and so on, are somehow different from the stuff that constitutes computers and other machines manufactured by humans. And we might hypothesize that material brains and material machines are fundamentally different from conscious minds. But whether or not such suppositions are true – and I think that they might well be – it does not follow that sentient, consciously aware, artificially produced people are not possible.

A French sociologist has argued very convincingly that we should beware of simplistic arguments in social science. Social phenomena, such as language, cannot exist without the interaction of individual human beings with their particular psychological and biological features. But it does not follow that the resultant social phenomena – or “emergent properties” – can be completely and correctly explained solely in terms of these features.

The same point about the possibility of emergent properties applies to all sciences. There could not be, for instance, computers of the sort many companies and individuals are now working at without the pieces of plastic, wires, silicon chips and so forth that make up the machine. Still, the operations of a computer cannot be explained solely in terms of the features of these individual components. Once these components are combined and interact in particular ways with electricity, a phenomenon of a new sort emerges: a computer. Similarly, once computers are combined and interact in particular ways, the internet is created. But clearly, the internet is a different sort of phenomenon from a tangible, physical computer.

In 1950, WWII codebreaker and intellectual wunderkind Alan Turing created a test to see if a computer could fool a human into thinking it too was human (i.e. the famous ‘Turing test’).

In a similar way, we need not suppose that minds are reducible to brains, molecules, atoms or any other physical elements that are required for them to function. They might be entities of a different sort that emerge from particular interactions and combinations of them.

There’s no obvious logical reason why conscious awareness of the sort that human beings possess – the capacity to think and make decisions – could not appear in a human machine some day. Whether it is physically possible and, therefore likely to actually happen, is open to debate.

Do Machines Even Deserve Our Existential Angst?

It doesn’t seem controversial to say that we shouldn’t slander dead people or wantonly destroy the planet so that future generations of unborn people are unable to enjoy it as we have (though we seem determined to try our hardest at both). Both groups are due moral respect and consideration. They should be regarded as potential objects of our moral duties and potential recipients of our benevolence.

But the dead and the yet to be born do not have viable bodies of any sort – whether natural or artificial. To deny conscious persons moral respect and consideration on the grounds that they had artificial rather than natural bodies would seem to be arbitrary and whimsical. It would require a justification, and it is not obvious what that might be.

One day, maybe sooner than we think, a consideration of the ethics of the treatment of rational, sentient machines might turn out to be more than an abstract academic exercise.

The Implications of Doppelgangers: Can We Copy and Paste Ourselves?

Artificial intelligence and robots have gotten steadily more advanced in recent years. It’s been a long road to that point, but with this new superpower global focus, the technology seems to be reaching an inflection point at which processing power and AI can produce truly ‘smart’ machines. This is something most people who are interested in the topic have come to understand. What comes next though might be the question of how human we can make modern robots and whether we really need or want to.

Breaking down these questions a little bit, we’ll begin with perhaps the most fundamental one: do we need robots to be more human or are we starting to venture into pretend-God territory?

The idea of humanoid robots armed with full intelligence has always been appealing in a certain way. It makes us imagine easier and more comfortable futures, and for some it calls to mind endearing sci-fi characters from film and literature. We like the idea of robots we can befriend like Commander Data, or which can help us around the house (at a bare minimum?). But do we really need humanoid AI machines?

It’s a particularly valid question when you think about some of the aspects of modern business and society that make for the broadest use of AI and machine learning today.

For instance, many associate AI with the impending driverless vehicle revolution, and the very idea of the IoT connecting so-called smart cities. While these are exciting ideas that may ease us into a future of safer, cleaner roads, both in cities and on highways, but for the most part, the AI involved in these scenarios has nothing to do with robots; we don’t imagine sleek metallic, humanoid figures taking the wheel, and indeed we already have cars that will steer and guide themselves without such facsimile props.

Or consider the use of AI in modern marketing, which is perhaps more subtle yet extremely widespread. An overview of marketing practices by Enterprise SEO consulting firms clearly raises awareness of the technological fusion with marketing teams and specifically speaks to the importance of machine learning for today’s companies. Advanced, highly capable AI programs can be used to comb through a company’s content and the web at large in order to gather and analyze data, all as a form of automated research for marketing efforts. It’s an intelligent technological capability that is getting more impressive (and being more widely used) with each passing year — but it doesn’t raise any need for humanoid robots.

Examples like these go on and on. Some restaurants are using AI to handle orders; some financial firms use AI to analyse markets; the technology is being applied in agriculture to responsibly improve crop yields and minimize waste and environmental effects. All of these represent expanding frontiers for AI that do not and will not, for the foreseeable future, require actual robotic figures.

Should We Make Robots More Human than Human?

Despite the examples above, there are of course some instances in which more humanoid AI machines can be of use. And even if there weren’t, innovators in the related fields would likely be working toward such machines simply to push boundaries and create new products. So, since we seem to be moving in that direction anyway, it’s also fair to ask if we should be trying to make robots more human, both in functionality and appearance.

There are certainly some negatives to consider when addressing this question. It’s possible that human-like, empathetic robots could actually cause us to empathize less with other people. Indeed, many would agree that we already struggle enough with empathy in modern society, increasingly walled off from conversation and interactive discourse by the ‘convenience’ of computers, cell phones and other ‘communication’ devices . And if we eventually begin to socialize often with humanoid robots designed to respond to us the way we want them to, this problem could become greater. Empathizing with other human beings — with their own complex circumstances and desires — may simply begin to feel difficult in comparison to empathizing with robotic beings which, effectively, want what’s best for us.

There are also job concerns to keep in mind. Some have taken to arguing that an age of robots won’t actually be a net-negative development for job markets. AI can create jobs about as easily as it can take them away, and we’re a long way away from a robot workforce. Nevertheless, it’s a virtual certainty that more human-like robots will eventually be considered for some jobs that AI systems can’t perform. For instance, while an AI program can take your order in a restaurant, a humanoid robot could deliver food, refill your water, and check back in to ask how you’re enjoying your meal. In a more aesthetic sense, human patrons would be more inclined to provide information and interact with a machine which approximates a familiar human format than one which is shaped like an upended box and traverses on wheels. This is the ‘Star Wars’ problem as posed by that cinematic universe: droids (or robots) which are less humanoid in appearance are treated with almost racist disdain whereas those. An AI program can also check you into a hotel and confirm your reservation, but a robot could come to carry your bags and escort you to your room. Of course, robots that look like robots (and not humans) could do these jobs too.

But it’s conceivable that employers and customers alike might be more willing to accept human-like machines in these scenarios. It’s also highly probable that, should all of this come to fruition, hotels, restaurants and services providers will even incorporate humanistic robots as part of an overall customer service or customer satisfaction rating.

AI Net Promoter Scores anyone?

On the other hand, there are plenty of “pros” to the idea of making human-like robots as well. They might appear to understand us better; they might blend into society more effectively; they might be able to comfort our children or assist our elderly. It’s just a matter of whether or not we can make them “human” enough to fulfil these potential benefits.

It's Not a Matter of Doing It: It's Whether We Ought To?

Whether or not we can make robots more fully human depends – naturally -- on a range of technological innovations. We need to see even better AI and even greater processing power, more fluid movements, and more convincing designs. Ultimately though, the effort may come down to two main goals: bridging the uncanny valley and developing theory of mind.

The uncanny valley is something you’ll see referenced in virtually every modern piece about robot and human interaction. A popular description once summed up the uncanny valley issue nicely, explaining that it describes a point at which robots stop being comforting and start being disturbing. Research has shown that we’re comfortable with robots when they have features we identify with — but that if they start to resemble us too closely, we begin to find them disturbing, or even repulsive. This can even happen when they approximate us in appearance but some quirk (i.e. faces which are too smooth; eyes which don't blink - with exceptions for Botox) take is out of the 'comfort zone.' Bridging this gap, or perhaps deliberately stopping short of it, will be crucial in the creation of human-like robots. On the one hand, it’s conceivable that some robots in the future will become so advanced that they’re nearly indistinguishable (think Westworld, or Battlestar Galactica's 2003 remake). On the other, it may be more likely that the push for more human robots stops short of exact physical features — such that we get robots that talk, think, and move like us, but are not made to exhibit fully humanoid features (Commander Data again).

As for theory of mind, can robots be taught to “read minds” in order to make them more human-like? This is not about the idea of robots actually attaining clairvoyance in the traditional sense but rather, it postulates the need to teach them theory of mind — which it defined as the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, goals, desires, etc.) to others. In other words, it means teaching robots to recognize us as the complex, conscious beings we are, as opposed to “something purely mechanistic and inanimate.” Oddly enough, to teach robots to be human, we need to first teach them to recognize fully that we are human.

One way or another, this will all be a process. There likely won’t be a point at which we make a collective decision of just how human to make robots, nor will there be a time when we recognize a machine as being the most human-like we’re going to produce. Like most of what has occurred in the history of our species this will not be a series of seminal events but rather the slow realization that one day we will wake up in a world where reality has outstripped fantasy.